Except that... everyone is wrong. Maybe Jobs could have been a little less abrasive... but what he said is true, all cell phones can reproduce this effect... yes, even dropping calls completely when you touch a certain spot near the antenna.If you use your cell phone in areas of poor reception, you will have reduced service.

Except that... everyone is wrong. Maybe Jobs could have been a little less abrasive... but what he said is true, all cell phones can reproduce this effect... yes, even dropping calls completely when you touch a certain spot near the antenna.If you use your cell phone in areas of poor reception, you will have reduced service.

THAT seems obvious. I'm not sure why everyone is missing this fact.

Nobody is missing that fact.

Everyone who is complaining is complaining about the antenna design specifically in the iPhone 4 which causes COMPLETE termination of reception and transmission by simply putting ONE FINGER connecting the antennae.

I know "Cult of Mac" members can be impervious to logic, but you can at least accept the above point, can't you? Please, Chillin, give me some sign that you can understand what was written above.

Fragmentation is not just something we have to acknowledge and accept. Fragmentation is something that we deal with every day, and we must accept it as a fact of the iPhone platform experience.

Everyone who is complaining is complaining about the antenna design specifically in the iPhone 4 which causes COMPLETE termination of reception and transmission by simply putting ONE FINGER connecting the antennae.

I know "Cult of Mac" members can be impervious to logic, but you can at least accept the above point, can't you? Please, Chillin, give me some sign that you can understand what was written above.

You're exaggerating, and your evidence is incidental. Most people report degraded signal, not a 'no service' condition. Mine drops 1-2 bars. It's not even annoying. Which is more likely? The folks with loss of signal strength but no interruption of service posting a video on the newsworthy 'youtube', or people with a valid complaint because it affects usage of the phone?

Just because you've found a few video's on the web doesn't mean the problem is all encompassing, nor does it mean that everyone is experiencing an issue.

[QUOTE=solipsism;1662401]1) I'm more likely to take you seriously if you don't use obnoxious markup.
[quote]
mea culpa...

Quote:

I say we have enough data to show there is an issue that it unsuitable for cellphones for those affected. The data does not show there is a design flaw with the iPhone 4. The data leans toward it being a HW issue for those affect, but it's still possible it simply a SW/driver issue (perhaps with one of the TriQuint chips).

or... no issue at all. Again I have to point out that this kind of data, no matter how much there is of it, is isolated, fractured data. It is a data point floating in a void, with tons of other data points floating in their own, isolated and unconnected void...
and you are trying to suck meaning out of it, to make a valid conclusion from it, and that is impossible.

Everyone who is complaining is complaining about the antenna design specifically in the iPhone 4 which causes COMPLETE termination of reception and transmission by simply putting ONE FINGER connecting the antennae.

I know "Cult of Mac" members can be impervious to logic, but you can at least accept the above point, can't you? Please, Chillin, give me some sign that you can understand what was written above.

Yet another seasoned member of the forums keeping it real. What's with these newly registered users who are bat-shit crazy? And who hate anyone pointing out anything bad about this new iPhone.

You're exaggerating, and your evidence is incidental. Most people report degraded signal, not a 'no service' condition. Mine drops 1-2 bars. It's not even annoying. Which is more likely? The folks with loss of signal strength but no interruption of service posting a video on the newsworthy 'youtube', or people with a valid complaint because it affects usage of the phone?

Just because you've found a few video's on the web doesn't mean the problem is all encompassing, nor does it mean that everyone is experiencing an issue.

or... no issue at all. Again I have to point out that this kind of data, no matter how much there is of it, is isolated, fractured data. It is a data point floating in a void, with tons of other data points floating in their own, isolated and unconnected void...
and you are trying to suck meaning out of it, to make a valid conclusion from it, and that is impossible.

I have to agree. It's too soon to tell if it's hardware, software, or both. I tend to think it's a bit of both. I think the new antenna design probably exaggerates the effect, but the fact that we're seeing this same issue on earlier iPhones after the upgrade to iOS4 leads me to believe they can probably resolve it or greatly reduce it via software update.

You don't say if you are shorting Apple stock, you don't say if you own competitor's stock, you give no sense of how much "much" is. And you still refuse to divulge who you work for. This is hypocrisy indeed!

And, I also note that you still haven't denied your involvement with Glenn Beck in the murder of a girl in 1990. Very clever to use words that imply you don't know him without actually coming right out and denying your association with him.

You sir, look guiltier and guiltier by the second.

No, I'm not shorting Apple stock.

The stock I do have is in a managed portfolio, the content of which changes at the discretion of the manager. I have no idea which stocks make up the portfolio but it's based on property investments.

Much is in the mid 5 figures

I'll tell you who I work for when you tell me who you work for, as I said before. Has Daniel divulged who he works for? You know, Apple? No?

And leaving the best to last, are you going to tell me who Glenn Beck is yet, or is that some state secret?

Yet another seasoned member of the forums keeping it real. What's with these newly registered users who are bat-shit crazy? And who hate anyone pointing out anything bad about this new iPhone.

I apologize for my enthusiasm.

I don't hate someone for finding a problem. I hate that it's false. I hate that people are claiming things they couldn't possibly know, not the people themselves.

I believe it was Wittgenstein that said that you cannot speak about what you do not know.

Yet that is what all these reports are... people who seem to believe that they know what is happening. Yes, I don't doubt that if you touch that spot on your new iPhone, you see reception wobbles, and can get a call to drop. What I am saying is this means nothing, for one, because we don't know, and you don't know, what the tower state is. For two, I can reproduce the effect on any cell phone in existence. This is why I am adamant about all these reports with people with problems. It is nothing more than mass hysteria.

The symptoms do not indicate a problem. It is as clear as that. Maybe there is a problem, but these reports do not tell us anything about it because they are fractured, isolated, and have zero connection to any other report.

You just admitted that you're not complaining about it, hence you do not fit the criteria from my post.

You mean I'm not included in 'Everyone'? Your making generalizations.

Quote:

Originally Posted by g3pro

Everyone who is complaining is complaining about the antenna design specifically in the iPhone 4 which causes COMPLETE termination of reception and transmission by simply putting ONE FINGER connecting the antennae.

It is hardly affecting everyone, most have to use a 'death grip' to see any symptoms, and it doesn't cause a complete loss of service for most.

Everyone who is complaining is complaining about the antenna design specifically in the iPhone 4 which causes COMPLETE termination of reception and transmission by simply putting ONE FINGER connecting the antennae.

And that is why yours and others diagnosis is irrational and fallacious. If it's a design flaw then it would be happening to all iPhone 4s. It's not, so it's something else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chillin

or... no issue at all. Again I have to point out that this kind of data, no matter how much there is of it, is isolated, fractured data. It is a data point floating in a void, with tons of other data points floating in their own, isolated and unconnected void...
and you are trying to suck meaning out of it, to make a valid conclusion from it, and that is impossible.

If it was just a couple videos or reports it could be faked but there is more than enough data points to conclude there is an issue with some iPhone 4s (not all) that is above and beyond the typical attenuation caused by the human body. Placing your finger in one area of the device shouldn't drop it from 5 bars to No Service within a few seconds. This seems to be a repeatable issue with those affected and I have no reason to believe they are falsified. That is an issue!

What will unfortunately happen is the trolls that make a mountain out of a molehill will undoubtedly cause enough ruckus that will scare those with normal attenuation issues to want support this making it harder for those with legitimate issues to get a new device. Shame on all of them

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

And that is why yours and others diagnosis is irrational and fallacious. If it's a design flaw then it would be happening to all iPhone 4s. It's not, so it's something else.

If it was just a couple videos or reports it could be faked but there is more than enough data points to conclude there is an issue with some iPhone 4s (not all) that is above and beyond the typical attenuation caused by the human body. Placing your finger in one area of the device shouldn't drop it from 5 bars to No Service within a few seconds. This seems to be a repeatable issue with those affected and I have no reason to believe they are falsified. That is an issue!

What will unfortunately happen is the trolls that make a mountain out of a molehill will undoubtedly cause enough ruckus that will scare those with normal attenuation issues to want support this making it harder for those with legitimate issues to get a new device. Shame on all of them

I love your last point... so I'm not going to respond to it... you are correct, this is going to be a problem.

But on your first point, that there seems to be enough evidence...

This I take issue with.

The evidence is not faked, it is just incomplete. What we have is a million people reporting about a tenth of the information we need to be able to make any kind of intelligent conclusion. What everyone is failing to see is what they can't see... or see through. Reports of this with one phone, any phone, becomes meaningless because we don't know what the cell is like in that area. "I always had good cell here before" doesn't cut it.

1) I'm more likely to take you seriously if you don't use obnoxious markup.

2) Yes, all devices that transmit and receive electromagnetic waves can be blocked. That does not mean that the claims which are highly reproducible are false or within the accepted range of attenuation from the human hand.

3) It would be great to have cell data see if the issue is specific to a particular operating band, RF signal strength range, or some other characteristic or group of characters, but we simply don't it and likely won't until someone can crack the Field Test Mode app in iOS 4.0 (if it's still there at all).

4) I say we have enough data to show there is an issue that it unsuitable for cellphones for those affected. The data does not show there is a design flaw with the iPhone 4. The data leans toward it being a HW issue for those affect, but it's still possible it simply a SW/driver issue (perhaps with one of the TriQuint chips).

Why not both? I am puzzled by all the wishful thinking of people who say it will be "cured" with a software update. It may be improved by a software update, but that does nothing for the hardware issue which seems to exist. While it may be true that installing a bumper mitigates the problem also, it is still a design flaw which should not have made it into a shipping product.

there's no point in talking sense to them soli, common sense (the least common of all senses) has gone out the window here. Apple has been rolling out one device after the other with absolute minimal to no issues, even if such devices are have no real precedent as with the ipad.

And now there seems to be an issue affecting a small minority of users, and the bloggers (which is becoming more and more a synonym to morons with too much time on their hands and a penchant for writing garbage for some nebulous notion of fame) and paid by competitors marketing pundits have gone berserk with glee. The irony in all this is that the very same pundits who ditch apple every chance they get, somehow presuppose that apple is infallible and thus their are outraged that one of their products can have a minor issue a few days after launch.

Why not both? I am puzzled by all the wishful thinking of people who say it will be "cured" with a software update. It may be improved by a software update, but that does nothing for the hardware issue which seems to exist. While it may be true that installing a bumper mitigates the problem also, it is still a design flaw which should not have made it into a shipping product.

You are committing the fallacy of begging the question by assuming there is a hardware issue. You are basing your conclusions, do doubt, on the many posting reception issues, but you are failing to see that all these reports, whether taken individually or all together, do not speak to there being an issue. The evidence is fractured and isolated and incomplete... all of it. No one knows the state of their tower. No one is reporting these issues exist underneath a tower with nothing blocking line of sight.

It's kind of like reporting that something is wrong with your car's steering... after failing a sobriety test. Or cutting off a frogs legs makes them deaf.

I have the same issue with my iPhone... however... I must note something that I've noticed about it.

When I'm at my parents house on 3G, I get no signal loss when I cover the antenna with my hand and web pages load really fast at the same time.

Then, when I'm at my apartment/work/local area, I get a degraded signal AND data will not load whatsoever when I cover the antenna. This makes me believe it may be a software issue.

If the problem was truly shorting out the antenna by connecting them, then it would be the same anywhere right?

By the way... this was all done over 3G and not Wifi.

These are my findings. Anyone else have a similar experience?

Possibly. If it's switching protocols and one of them isn't properly tuned. I seem to recall the 1st gen phone had connection issues that had to be resolved by fine tuning the frequencies the phone used to communicate. It's been 3 years so I don't recall the specifics, but it was the same sort of rabble rabble at the time. I'm not convinced this is strictly hardware, especially in light of videos showing a 3G doing the exact same thing. Since the 3G's antenna's are under the covers, that makes software a viable cause.

You mean I'm not included in 'Everyone'? Your making generalizations.
It is hardly affecting everyone, most have to use a 'death grip' to see any symptoms, and it doesn't cause a complete loss of service for most.

You still haven't actually read it. "EVERYONE WHO IS COMPLAINING". Since you didn't complain of lost reception, why would you be in that group?

Fragmentation is not just something we have to acknowledge and accept. Fragmentation is something that we deal with every day, and we must accept it as a fact of the iPhone platform experience.

And that is why yours and others diagnosis is irrational and fallacious. If it's a design flaw then it would be happening to all iPhone 4s. It's not, so it's something else.

If it's not a design flaw, then can you explain how a single finger can completely block reception and transmission over the single point which happens to be the insulated junction between the antennae:

You still haven't actually read it. "EVERYONE WHO IS COMPLAINING". Since you didn't complain of lost reception, why would you be in that group?

Well that's odd. The very video from YouTube you've been posting for the last few pages attempted the 'one finger disconnect of death', yet it never disconnected. Did he experience an issue? Of course. Was he complaining? Yes, as he took the time to document and upload it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by g3pro

The evidence for the antenna issue is absolutely evident here: (watch at 2:47 mark)

You are generalizing. When the simple fact is that most people aren't experiencing dropped service. Otherwise we'd have about 600,000 or more folks complaining that they can't dial anyone on their shiny new phone. Instead we're seeing complaints ranging from minor annoyance, odd curiosity, no-bars, and no-service issues. Is there an issue? Obviously. Is it as bad as your making it sound? Highly unlikely.

You are generalizing. When the simple fact is that most people aren't experiencing dropped service. Otherwise we'd have about 600,000 or more folks complaining that they can't dial anyone on their shiny new phone. Instead we're seeing complaints ranging from minor annoyance, odd curiosity, no-bars, and no-service issues. Is there an issue? Obviously. Is it as bad as your making it sound? Highly unlikely.

Of course I'm generalizing. I just saw 5 different reports from 5 local stations last night lambasting Apple for the design lapse. And guess what? They had average Joe's interviewed and they had the same complaints.

Whodathunkit??

Fragmentation is not just something we have to acknowledge and accept. Fragmentation is something that we deal with every day, and we must accept it as a fact of the iPhone platform experience.

Of course I'm generalizing. I just saw 5 different reports from 5 local stations last night lambasting Apple for the design lapse. And guess what? They had average Joe's interviewed and they had the same complaints.

Whodathunkit??

And I saw 5 reports that the phone was an excellent piece of technology. Could it be that your simply finding what your looking for? It doesn't make good news when they go out and find people that say 'hey, nothing interesting here'. That's why they call it the news...

"To assure optimal phone performance and ensure human exposure to RF
energy is within the guidelines set forth in the relevant standards, always use
your device only in its normal-use position. Contact with the antenna area may
impair call quality and cause your device to operate at a higher power level
than needed. Avoiding contact with the antenna area when the phone is IN
USE optimizes the antenna performance and the battery life."

The antenna is not the bottom of the phone like all other phones are, no! THE APPLE iPHONE ANTENNA IS IN THE ENTIRE GRIP OF THE PHONE!!!

That is, by definition, a design flaw.

You just admitted that the design of the iPhone 4 is the problem because the hand will automatically touch the antenna because it's where the hand typically grabs the phone, unlike all other phones on the market today.

Apple's idiotic design for the iPhone 4 is the problem. I'm glad you finally admitted it.

Fragmentation is not just something we have to acknowledge and accept. Fragmentation is something that we deal with every day, and we must accept it as a fact of the iPhone platform experience.

As usual, every iPhone thread here eventually devolves into childish arguments over who's right and who's wrong.

Every single iPhone has had some problem when released that gets the knickers of some in a knot. Apple has always been able to rectify most of these problems and I'm sure they'll do the same this time.

But it's certainly not helpful for Steve Jobs to send out snarky replies to customers with legitimate complaints. That was just stupid, just like most of the last two pages of posts in this thread.

"To assure optimal phone performance and ensure human exposure to RF
energy is within the guidelines set forth in the relevant standards, always use
your device only in its normal-use position. Contact with the antenna area may
impair call quality and cause your device to operate at a higher power level
than needed. Avoiding contact with the antenna area when the phone is IN
USE optimizes the antenna performance and the battery life."

The antenna is not the bottom of the phone like all other phones are, no! THE APPLE iPHONE ANTENNA IS IN THE ENTIRE GRIP OF THE PHONE!!!

That is, by definition, a design flaw.

You just admitted that the design of the iPhone 4 is the problem because the hand will automatically touch the antenna because it's where the hand typically grabs the phone, unlike all other phones on the market today.

Apple's idiotic design for the iPhone 4 is the problem. I'm glad you finally admitted it.

That's rather premature. Given the anecdotal evidence is all over the place, it could more likely be either a manufacturing defect or a software issue (software does control hardware, including signal strength and fixing). I find it hard to believe it's a design flaw with so many engineers all over the place working on this thing for at least a year, and all the testing that it's been through. These guys aren't just out of undergrad engineering school. They well know about attenuation.

Ah... well, the actual rational explanation is that you're in an area of poor reception. If you can duplicate this underneath a tower where the reception is known to be 100%, then you may have a point. Otherwise, the evidence, the video, the conclusions... all scientifically meaningless.

That's rather premature. Given the anecdotal evidence is all over the place, it could more likely be either a manufacturing defect or a software issue (software does control hardware, including signal strength and fixing). I find it hard to believe it's a design flaw with so many engineers all over the place working on this thing for at least a year, and all the testing that it's been through. These guys aren't just out of undergrad engineering school. They well know about attenuation.

Really?

Knowing about something and doing something about it are two entirely different things. This also shows a complete lack of testing of the device before committing to production and a disregard of human factors in the use of the device.

I know, that was my point, which you did not understand. Non-idiot designers tend to put antennae in locations where they will be touched the least, aka the bottom of the phone (or the top, but the FCC doesn't allow that).

Apple is the only idiotic company that puts the ANTENNAE of a PHONE into the grip.

Fragmentation is not just something we have to acknowledge and accept. Fragmentation is something that we deal with every day, and we must accept it as a fact of the iPhone platform experience.

Knowing about something and doing something about it are two entirely different things. This also shows a complete lack of testing of the device before committing to production and a disregard of human factors in the use of the device.

True, but no one knows at this point that anyone knew anything before full scale production was authorized. We're arguing in the dark. Look, if it does turn out to be a design flaw, don't you think Apple is going to do something about it? But it's premature to determine that anything (or at least any ONE thing) is responsible for what some people (others, not) are experiencing. You really stand by your statement that there was a "complete lack of testing"? That's hard to buy.

Ah... well, the actual rational explanation is that you're in an area of poor reception. If you can duplicate this underneath a tower where the reception is known to be 100%, then you may have a point. Otherwise, the evidence, the video, the conclusions... all scientifically meaningless.

You don't understand the scientific method.

The hypothesis was that holding a phone attenuates the signal.

The experiment was done to evaluate this, by finding the exact location when the phone loses signal. That experiment shows definitively that the point is the insulated portion between the two antennae.

It is scientifically established.

Fragmentation is not just something we have to acknowledge and accept. Fragmentation is something that we deal with every day, and we must accept it as a fact of the iPhone platform experience.

Knowing about something and doing something about it are two entirely different things. This also shows a complete lack of testing of the device before committing to production and a disregard of human factors in the use of the device.

do you really believe that there was a "complete lack of testing of the device before committing to production", doesn't this sound ridiculous to you too?